Pain
by morallyambiguous
Summary: For that moment in the catacombs under Ba Sing Se he wasn't a firebender and she wasn't a waterbender. For that moment they were just two people. zutara week day 3


**a/n: **i don't actually like this one. but whatever. i need to submit something. zutara week is going strong!

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She was young, three summers had passed since her birth, but the whole village knew that she was special. They knew. She was a waterbender. The only waterbender in the Southern Water Tribe. They were so proud of her, all of them in their own little way. She was a spark of light in their otherwise dull way of life. She was their proof that they would not give up. They weren't dead yet.

And then the day came. A day few young ones in their tribe remembered. Even Sokka had a hard time remembering and he had been past five summers at the time it had occurred.

The Day of Black Snow.

The day when the Southern Water Tribe had fallen down to its knees. The Fire Nation had had reason to suspect that there was a waterbender among them and they had sought to resolve that. They stormed into huts and igloos, people's homes looking for the waterbender. Then Kaya had stood up. Their leader's wife, brave and caring and strong in her husbands absence. She had stood in front of a Fire Nation soldier declaring herself to be the last waterbender.

And they had struck her down. In front of her own child. Katara had never known pain like that before. It had torn through her so fast and deadly that she could not speak for weeks afterword. Only talking when her father had come home. Even then she had not cried. Despite the tribe's insistence that she do so.

Katara never told them, but she felt that there were no amount of tears she could shed to ease the pain.

Zuko was only eight when his mother had left. It was like one day she was there and the next she was gone. One day she was protecting him from turtleducks and all the hurt in the world and the next she had abandoned him to the cruel mercies of his father.

She had come to him in the dead of night, offering no explanation, no reasoning, no comfort. She had just told him that she couldn't stay any longer and that he would have to be a good boy and look after his sister for her. But he didn't understand why he had to look after Azula. His mother was there to look after her and Azula really didn't need anyone to look after her. She kissed him on his forehead and urged him to go back to sleep. He followed with no trouble, still not realizing that in the morning she would be gone.

And she was and Azula grew close to her father.

Zuko never told anyone that he felt that he had failed his mother. He blamed himself for the way his sister turned out.

Katara was only five when her father left again. It had been two years since the death of his wife and he felt that he was needed out in the war. He didn't say goodbye. He knew that if he had to look Katara in the eye and say "goodbye" he wouldn't be able to do it.

So he didn't. He just... left.

Katara didn't cry after that either. She didn't think that she wanted to anyway. All she wanted to do was hurt him for leaving her, for leaving Sokka, who needed him the most and even to a lesser extent for leaving GranGran to look out for the tribe. She didn't think of herself because if she did then she would cry and she didn't have time for that. She had to cook and she had to clean and she had to help Sokka hunt and help GranGran run the medicine hut and she had so much to do, there was no time for crying.

So she locked her hurt in a little place inside her heart, right next to her mother's murder and felt just a little bit broken.

Zuko was thirteen when he was banished. He had spoken out of turn against one his father's most trusted and most important general's in a war meeting. Which, he reflected later, wasn't that big of a deal. However, his father was not one for impudence. Then the general, a full-grown man, had called the just hitting puberty boy out for and Agni Kai.

Things just went downhill from there. He had shown up to the Agni Kai, despite being scared in every fiber and thread and cell in his body, ready to fight the general he had spoken out against. Only to come face to face with his father of all people.

His father he could not, would not fight. He loved his father, he did not want to hurt him, but his father did not see it that way. He told Zuko that he was weak, lucky to be born, a failure as a Fire Nation Prince. Zuko stood up and tried to face his father. But how could he? The man was the Fire Lord and in his bending prime where Zuko was just starting to grow into his power.

He lost as his father fired a blast of heat at him that burned his face. He felt the skin melting from the heat, his eye burned with the bright light and he fell to the ground in pain as his father declared him banished, only to return if he brought the Avatar back. His honor would be restored and he would be welcome in Fire Nation territories.

"A fool's errand for a fool." He told his son who was writhing on the ground in pain.

Zuko felt the agonizing pain from his scar plenty clear.

But the heart wrenching pain of abandonment hurt where his scar could not.

"The Fire Nation took my mother away from me!" Katara cried, tears running down her face as the wound was ripped open again.

Zuko was quiet for a moment. Realizing how far the pain this war, his people's war, ran.

"That's something we have in common." He told her. Wanting someone to understand, to connect with him.

For that moment in the catacombs under Ba Sing Se he wasn't a firebender and she wasn't a waterbender. He wasn't after the Avatar and she wasn't running away from him. He wasn't Zuko and she wasn't Katara. For that moment they were just two people, a young man and young women, who were in great pain. They were human and as she smiled watery, warily at him. He knew she understood that.

Because for just that moment, the pain was a little easier to bear.

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**a/n: **read & review


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